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The following year was uneventful, but the year 1577 was marked by that rebellion in Orissa under Dáúd of which I have already spoken. The campaign was stirring whilst it lasted, but the death of Dáúd and his uncle put an end to it. This year, likewise, there was trouble in Rájpútána.
We have followed its ascending curve from Saadia through Gabirol, Bahya and Ibn Daud to its highest point in Maimonides, and we likewise traced its descent through Gersonides, Crescas and Albo. We took account of its essential nature as being a serious and conscientious attempt to define a Jewish Weltanschauung in the midst of conflicting claims of religions and philosophies.
It may be added that he carried out this resolution with vigour, and followed up Dáúd relentlessly, defeating him at Bájhura, and finally compelling him to surrender at Cuttack. With the surrender of this prince, the conquest of Bengal might be regarded as achieved.
Here also he follows Aristotelian ideas as expressed in the writings of the Arabs Alfarabi and Avicenna, and was anticipated among the Jews by Ibn Daud. His distinction here as elsewhere is that he went further than his model in the manner of his elaboration of the doctrine. He cites three opinions concerning prophecy: 1. The Opinion of the Masses.
The influence of the Kalam is present in greater or less degree in the philosophers up to Abraham Ibn Daud and Maimonides. The latter gave this system its death blow in his thoroughgoing criticism, and thenceforth Aristotelianism was in possession of the field until that too was attacked by Hasdai Crescas.
The philosophers call them secondary causes. Accordingly Ibn Daud follows his physical doctrines with a discussion of the soul. There is nothing new in his proof that such a thing as soul exists. Stone and tree and horse and man are all bodies and yet the last three have powers and functions which the stone has not, viz., nutrition, growth and reproduction.
Ibn Daud maintains absolute freedom and frankly sacrifices foreknowledge; though his defence of freedom is secured by blinding himself to the argument most dangerous to that doctrine. Abraham Ibn Daud concludes his "Emunah Ramah" by a discussion of ethics and the application of the principles thus discovered to the laws of the Bible.
But in Hillel's definition of the soul we have an extreme form of this peculiar combination, and it represents a step backward to the standpoint of Pseudo-Bahya and Ibn Zaddik. The work of Ibn Daud and Maimonides in the interest of a purer Aristotelianism seems not to have enlightened Hillel. The Neo-Platonic emanation theory is clearly enunciated in Hillel's definition.
Like many of his predecessors who treated of the soul, Ibn Daud also finds it necessary to guard against the materialistic theory of the soul which would make it the product of the elemental mixture in the body, if not itself body.
We should be tempted to omit these technical arguments entirely if it were not for the fact that it is in the form which Maimonides gave them that they became classic in Jewish philosophy, and not in that of Ibn Daud.
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